I’ve owned Sketchers stock for about five years. That was a big pop down. But it has been a great stock. Stock tip - consider getting in now on this big dip and hold it for another five years. No dividend, so real good in a non-IRA/401k.

What in America is anyone prohibited from doing, earning, or achieving?

Skechers’ attorneys wrote: "Skechers is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that between January 13, 2018 and March 31, 2018, De Sousa played basketball for the University of Kansas in 20 games, consistently wearing footwear and clothing with prominent Adidas logos both on and off the court. On information and belief, most, if not all, of the games in which De Sousa played while wearing Adidas-branded gear were televised locally, regionally, and/or nationally."

I am confused…what else was Silvio supposed to wear? If I ever need a lawyer, I surely hope I can do better than these jokers.

If you want loyalty get a dog; better yet, get two just in case one turns on you.

Appears to me Sketchers is trying to get on the gravy train? Can’t say I blame them. If a women can sue McDonalds for hot coffee and win. Then I think Sketchers can sue Adidas and win. Welcome to new world order. Coming to a business near you.

I actually studied that McDonald’s coffee case when I was in law school. While it is popular to point out as an example of out of control lawsuits, that’s not the case when you look at the facts. Here are the facts as I remember them.

Coffee beans are graded on an A, B, C, D, etc. scale, similar to school, with A being the best (the gourmet coffees) and B being the regular coffees. C beans are used for planting and other things like that, but aren’t used to make grounds. For each coffee bean grade, there is an optimal temperature at which the flavor is best for serving. For A beans, it’s about 160 degrees F. For B beans, its about 170-175. For C beans, it’s about 190-195. Basically, C beans only have their best flavor during brewing. As they cool, they don’t taste as good.

A McDonald’s executive realized they could get C grade beans much cheaper than the B grade beans they were using at the time, and not lose the flavor if they just heated up their pots a little bit more and served the coffee at a higher temperature.

So McDonald’s started serving their coffee at a little over 190 degrees.

Water boils at 212 degrees, so McDonald’s was serving coffee at just about 20 degrees below boiling temperature, knowing fully well that the coffee was hot enough to easily scald anyone. Additionally, McDonald’s knew that the coffee cups they were using could deform slightly when the coffee was that hot, meaning the lids would not stay on tight.

The perfect storm of events was set - incredibly hot coffee, a cup that wasn’t designed to handle liquids that hot, a loose lid and a drive through window. The victim in this case suffered second and third degree burns on her legs and lap. She had to have several skin grafts, including the removal of some of her feminine areas because they were burned too badly. Very serious injuries - in some areas her clothes had been scalded onto her skin by the coffee.

The jury awarded her all of her medical expenses, and then did a very specific calculation for the other damages. They took the total amount that McDonald’s made on coffee sales for one day, and subtracted out what the profit would be if McDonald’s had used the B grade beans instead of C grade beans. That’s how they came to the final number in the award - the difference in a day’s coffee profits from using the cheaper beans vs. using the standard beans.

McDonald’s made a business decision to use the cheaper beans even though they knew they would have to serve hotter coffee, and didn’t compensate for serving the hotter coffee by buying heavier duty cups to serve it in, sticking with their regular cups even though those cups could warp with the hotter liquid. The jury award accounted for that business decision. That’s how the system should work.

@justanotherfan Excellent explanation. While the legal system gets criticized (and of course deserves it at times), the horrific injuries and events that are a “risk analysis” justifies some of the results that seem outrageous. The reality is that most of the outrageous results are significantly lower dollar, where defendants pay to make a bogus and defendable claim go away.

What in America is anyone prohibited from doing, earning, or achieving?

Unless Sketchers is giving away free shoes to KU players, which would probably an impermissible benefit anyway, I just don’t see any of them wearing them since Adidas provides a large number of shoes of all kinds to every player.

I would not be surprised if Adidas contract with KU precludes (or strongly discourages) players from wearing any other brand.

If you want loyalty get a dog; better yet, get two just in case one turns on you.

I saw a portion of one of these types of contracts a few years ago. Players are required to wear the contracted attire for games and "team activities, which is why you see the players get off the bus, for instance, wearing their shoes, hoodies, jackets, t-shirts, etc. However, for non team activities (going to class, going out, etc.) the players can wear whatever they want because the contract can’t bind the players personally.

The flip side of it is that the players receive several pair of shoes and lots of apparel from Adidas anyway, so they wear a lot of that stuff around campus, etc. After all, if you have four or five Adidas hoodies, three pairs of sweat pants, a track suit, seven different t-shirts and four pair of shoes that you get for free, what are you going to likely wear a lot of days? Especially when you get all of that washed for free.

@JayHawkFanToo Sketchers better watch it. The Feds will charge them with defrauding the university by providing them shoes (impermissible benefits) that would make them ineligible (in theory) and thus deprive the university (the victim) of their anticipated benefit. And holy crap, FedEx could get charged for delivering them, as a co-conspirator. You might get charged for thinking about it.

Can you even imagine any school wearing Sketchers basketball shoes if there ever was such a thing?

They need to buy the Converse brand from Nike and use that name.

What in America is anyone prohibited from doing, earning, or achieving?

Yeah, not sure I can see another company attempt to enter this market. It’s expensive to enter this market, but the potential sales are huge.

I just think it cuts sketcher too thin. They make so many different shoes now and their market strategy looks effective.

Sketchers would have to raise a ton of capital and I don’t think they can play “criminal” like Adidas and Nike as easily because these two companies have been around a long time and are entrenched in their pseudo-legal business practices (actually, extremely illegal, but these companies would be harder to nail than to a drug cartel).

However… perhaps Sketchers has an inside track on the feds doing a more-thorough investigation of both Adidas and Nike. This Adidas bust seems fishy because Nike’s illegal activities are more widespread than Adidas. Why didn’t the feds just go after the entire ShoeCo illegal activities?

Or… since Nike’s dirt is so large, perhaps they will release info about them soon, too.

I think the concept with Sketchers is to operate cleanly and show the difference between clean and dirty. If they come in clean, both Nike and Adidas will look like the trash they are. Then… every player considering one of these two big shoecos will have to drag along the reputation that they are dirty, too.

Or… maybe the big shoecos will get nailed so hard that they will be largely banned from NCAA participation. Hard to see that since they contribute so much capital to D1 and the entire structure behind it.

Eventually… the shoeco dirt will have to be cleaned up. D1 will never operate anywhere near correctly as long as they are sloshing around all those cash dollars.